Forums are governed by a set of individuals, collectively referred to as staff, made up of administrators and moderators, which are responsible for the forums’ conception, technical maintenance, and policies (creation and enforcing). Most forums have a list of rules detailing the wishes, aim and guidelines of the forums creators. There is usually also a FAQ section contain basic information for new members and people not yet familiar with the use and principles of a forum (generally tailored for specific forum software).
Rules on forums usually apply to the entire user body and often have preset exceptions, most commonly designating a section as an exception. For example, in an IT forum any discussion regarding anything but computer programming languages may be against the rules, with the exception of a general chat section.
Forum rules are maintained and enforced by the moderation team, but users are allowed to help out via what is known as a report system. Most American forum software contains such a system. It consists of a small function applicable to each post (including one’s own). Using it will notify all currently available moderators of its location, and subsequent action or judgment can be carried out immediately, which is particularly desirable in large or very developed boards. Generally, moderators encourage members to also use the private message system if they wish to report behavior. Moderators will generally frown upon attempts of moderation by non-moderators, especially when the would-be moderators do not even issue a report. Messages from non-moderators acting as moderators generally declare a post as against the rules, or predict punishment. While not harmful, statements which attempt to enforce the rules are discouraged.
When rules are broken several steps are commonly taken. First a warning is usually given; this is commonly in the form of a private message but recent development has made it possible for it to be integrated into the software. Subsequently, if the act is ignored and warnings do not work, the member is – usually – first exiled from the forum for a number of days. Denying someone access to the site is called a ban. Bans can mean the person can no longer log in or even view the site anymore. If the offender, after the warning sentence, repeats the offense, another ban is given, usually this time a longer one. Continuous harassment of the site eventually leads to a permanent ban. However, in most cases this simply means the account is locked. In extreme cases where the offender – after being permanently banned – creates another account and continues to harass the site, administrators will apply an IP ban (this can also be applied at the server level): if the IP is static, the machine of the offender is prevented from accessing the site. In some extreme circumstances, IP range bans or country bans can be applied; however, this is usually for political, licensing or other reasons. See also: Block (internet), IP blocking, Internet censorship.
Offending content is usually deleted. Sometimes if the topic is considered the source of the problem, it is locked; often a poster may request a topic expected to draw problems to be locked as well, although the moderators decide whether to grant it. In a locked thread, members cannot post anymore. In cases where the topic is considered a breach of rules it – with all of its posts – may be deleted.
Troll
Forum trolls are users that repeatedly and deliberately breach the netiquette of an established online community, posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages to bait or excite users into responding or to test the forum rules and policies, and with that the patience of the forum staff. Their provocative behavior may potentially start flame wars (see below) or other disturbances. Responding to a troll’s provocations is commonly known as ‘feeding the troll’ and is generally discouraged, as it can encourage their disruptive behavior.
Sock puppet
The term sock puppet refers to someone who is simultaneously registered under different pseudonyms on a particular message board or forum. The analogy of a sock puppet is of a puppeteer holding up both hands and supplying dialogue to both puppets simultaneously. A sock puppet will create multiple accounts over a period of time, using each user to debate or agree with each other on a forum. Sock puppets are usually found when an IP check is done on the accounts in forums.
Spamming
Forum spamming is a breach of netiquette where users repeat the same word or phrase over and over, but differs from multiple posting in that spamming is usually a willful act which sometimes has malicious intent. This is a common trolling technique. It can also be traditional spam, unpaid advertisements that are in breach of the forum’s rules. Spammers utilize a number of illicit techniques to post their spam, including the use of botnets.
Some forums consider concise, comment-oriented posts spam, for example Thank you, Cool or I love it.
Double posting
One common faux pas on Internet forums is to post the same message twice. Users sometimes post versions of a message that are only slightly different, especially in forums where they are not allowed to edit their earlier posts. Multiple posting instead of editing prior posts can artificially inflate a user’s post count. Multiple posting can be unintentional; a user’s browser might display an error message even though the post has been transmitted or a user of a slow forum might become impatient and repeatedly hit the submit button. Multiple posting can also be used as a method of trolling or spreading forum spam. A user may also send the same post to several forums, which is termed crossposting. The term derives from Usenet, where crossposting was an accepted practice; however, it causes problems in web forums, which lack the ability to link such posts, so replies in one forum are not visible to people reading the post in other forums.
Word censor
A word censoring system is commonly included in the forum software package. The system will pick up words in the body of the post or some other user editable forum element (like user titles) and if they partially match a certain keyword (commonly no case sensitivity) they will be censored. The most common censoring is letter replacement with an asterisk character; for example: in the user title it is deemed inappropriate for users to use words such as “admin”, “moderator”, “leader” and so on, if the censoring system is implemented a title such as “forum leader” may be filtered to “forum ******”. Rude or vulgar words are common targets for the censoring system. But such auto-censors can make mistakes, for example censoring “wristwatch” to “wris****ch” and “Scunthorpe” to “S****horpe.”
